My Last Day Mentoring

For the last several months I have had the neatest opportunity to volunteer as a mentor at The Heritage School in Provo. Heritage is a residential treatment center for at-risk teenagers- meaning that the kids stay at least a year or two until their treatment is complete. It is a locked down school, so the kids rarely get to leave campus, and for an outsider to get in you have to go through a secured gate. To even become a mentor I had to do about 12 hours of training, plus a thorough background and security check. I was assigned as a mentor to a darling girl named Monique. Each week we would get together for an hour or two and visit. Sometimes we just took walks around campus, other times we cooked (black beans & rice - yum!!), and quite often we played games. She is the master of card games and taught me about ten new ones. Needless to say, I got creamed most of the time. (Except when we played Phase 10. I rocked that one.) Tonight was my last time visiting with her. We are both so sad! I am really going to miss mentoring. It gave me the chance to do something apart from my kids (you know, the whole develop my own identity thing), and at the same time, it really helped me put my life in perspective. No matter how tough my life seems, it is nothing compared to the kids at this school. So sad to see this phase of my life end!